Milwaukee-based BrightStar Wisconsin Foundation Inc. has invested $250,000 in Madison health care IT startup Moxe Health.
BrightStar’s funds, deployed in April, were used to fill a gap while Moxe worked to close a $5.5 million funding round, which occurred earlier this month, said Todd Sobotka, portfolio manager at BrightStar.
“It gave (Moxe CEO Dan Wilson) a very solid runway of time to combine that with the money he did have to put him in a stronger position over the next few months, because he was talking to multiple players,” Sobotka said.
Moxe has developed an electronic health record integration technology that automates data exchange between health care providers and health plans to help both serve high-risk populations. The company currently has nine employees, but Sobotka expects it to grow quickly.
“I think this is a hot space, I think he’s got something that could be incredibly valuable to the space and I think this scored about as high on the job creation side as about anything in the past three years,” Sobotka said.
The capital investments will be used to fund Moxe’s rapid growth across the board, he said.
“Providing a longitudinal patient record is one of the core components of the country’s move to outcomes-based medicine,” Sobotka said. “Moxe has designed the ‘pipes’ that clinical and demographic information travels through that allow for more efficient data transfer between providers and payers. The company’s product is being used around the country, bringing a newfound efficiency to our health care system.”
A nonprofit, BrightStar was formed in late 2013 to practice venture philanthropy, in which donations are deployed to early stage startup companies that will create jobs in Wisconsin. The returns are invested back into the organization and new startups. BizTimes detailed the process in a 2014 cover story.
“BrightStar’s investment earlier this year was key in allowing us to expand operations, while also putting us in a stronger position to identify and partner with excellent Series A investors,” Wilson said. “In the end, BrightStar helped us bring additional capital into Wisconsin in support of our aggressive hiring plans.”
This is the first investment BrightStar has made solo and its second investment in 2016.
